Apr 17
Click for full imageTom Noir’s Art Direction:
“Scotty, we need more clip-art!”
“She can’t take much more captain! We push her any harder and we risk a font overload!”
“Dammit, just do it man!”
Published 1999
(Average: 8.58 out of 10)
Loading...
Lastest Tweet
April 17th, 2012 at 11:25 am
‘If you’re going to parody the Sistine Chapel ceiling, don’t clog it with phallic space ships.’ Shouldn’t it be a design school rule that they teach you on the first day?
April 17th, 2012 at 11:56 am
Michelangelo, move under.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Ah, I remember the early days of desktop publishing and colour inkjets, when you just HAD to use every font and every colour on every single flyer you created.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
“What are you thinking about right now, James P. Hogan?”
“Oh, you know. Spaceships. Other planets. Monkeys. Flying monkeys. Robotic flying monkeys. Robotic flying monkeys holding up the Master Chief from Halo while he touches the finger of a regular monkey, like in that Michelangelo painting of God and Adam. Just stuff like that. What were YOU thinking about?”
“I’m thinking I just remembered I have somewhere else to be…”
April 17th, 2012 at 1:13 pm
If he was going with the Halo motif, a Covenant alien would’ve been better than a monkey. And that dude’s face is going to haunt me all day.
April 17th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
The credibility of the promised authorial vision is somewhat torpedoed by the less-than-grand design of the cover…
…it’s as if a five-year-old with a crayon was told to write “SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE” on the front page.
April 17th, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Clarke: Izaac Asimov, let’s see if this used bookstore has more of your books on the shelf, or more of mine.
Asimov: Arthur Clarke, move over… to the H’s and take a look at that cover!
Clarke: Good show, sir!
April 17th, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Makes me curious about the cover to his previous book, Rockets, Redheads & Revolution…
To the Googles!
http://bonanzleimages.s3.amazonaws.com/afu/images/0491/7704/ard_001.jpg
April 17th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
RoboHovah: ‘Bugger! I forgot to earth the ape!’
April 17th, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Rockets, Redheads and Revolution could be a Heinlein novel.
April 18th, 2012 at 3:04 am
Where are the rivets in MACHINES? This cover deserves rivets and a DNA helix.
April 18th, 2012 at 10:51 am
The dude is actually the ‘dean of hard SF’, James P. Hogan himself. He did a third one, CATASTROPHES, CHAOS & CONVOLUTIONS.
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/f/fd/CTSTRPHSCH2005.jpg
Notice how they use only 2 fonts here? Must have been a bad day at Baen.
April 21st, 2012 at 4:11 am
Am I the only one who thought that that was Walter Koenig’s face? Seriously, I’m convinced it’s either going to ask me where the nuclear wessels are or go “Be seeing you!”
April 24th, 2012 at 1:02 am
“Arthur Clarke, move over twerp! Me and Hogan got this sci-fi game covered now!” – Isaac Asimov
June 21st, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Is that Newt Gingrich?
Is this what his moon colony would look like?
June 22nd, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Yes.
April 20th, 2015 at 1:32 pm
I have been corrected since I wrote my original pithy blurb, no clip art is involved here. James Hogan’s enormous head does in fact orbit the earth, staring forever distantly out into space.
I apologize for any confusion.
August 20th, 2015 at 5:24 am
“Arthur Clarke, move over.” – Issac Asimov.
… as said that time they were forced to share a bunk at a sci-fi convention.
January 6th, 2017 at 6:00 am
I met Hogan many times, drinks and laffs in the con suite sort of things, and I wouldn’t recognize this picture; I’d probably wonder when Philip Seymour Hoffman wrote SF.
Sadly, in his later years, he went full loony — AIDS, climate change, evolution, and Holocaust denial. This also made him way less fun to hang out with, as did the fact that his 4th wife was ready to cut a bitch if you so much as looked at him.
December 15th, 2017 at 6:01 am
“Oxford Comma, move over” – James P. Hogan
December 15th, 2017 at 6:41 am
Why does Cyber-God need cyber-angels. It’s 1999: why can’t he use AOL Instant Messenger like everyone else. I hear it’s the way of the future.
December 15th, 2017 at 11:40 am
“Take your hands off my ceiling you damn stinking ape.” shouts two Charlton Hestons to BAEN.
December 15th, 2017 at 12:56 pm
Bean: the only constant in an ever evolving universe.
December 15th, 2017 at 1:18 pm
If the giant Hogan Head in the sky is blotted out by a cloud of flying robot monkeys you had better believe He is the Lord.
December 15th, 2017 at 2:05 pm
@Bibliomancer—Oxford comma, shmoxford shmomma—check out that crazy ampersand, man!!
December 15th, 2017 at 2:12 pm
It just occurs to me, I wonder if BAEN®️ came into existence only because it knew someday there would be this website, and it’s all part of a diabolical plot to eventually drive us all mad with these covers.
If so, it may be working.
December 15th, 2017 at 2:43 pm
This should have been a two page cut out hole in the middle cover with an embossed Hogan Death Star Head on page two.
December 15th, 2017 at 3:25 pm
@bc25 it looks more like a g clef.
December 15th, 2017 at 5:32 pm
#8. Can anyone explain what the lone word “for” is meant to signify on the cover of Rockets, Redheads & Revolution?
http://bonanzleimages.s3.amazonaws.com/afu/images/0491/7704/ard_001.jpg
December 15th, 2017 at 6:02 pm
Wow. Tough one. Perhaps “Arthur C. Clarke, move over.” for Rockets, Redheads & Revolution
or
Arthur C. Clarke move over for Isaac Asimov A Dean of Hard SF for Publisher’s Weekly
December 15th, 2017 at 6:32 pm
The first interpretation makes sense grammatically, but if that’s what they meant, they laid it out very poorly. I’m tempted to think that the “for” is not even supposed to be there.
December 15th, 2017 at 6:41 pm
@Tor: Good link! Hard to believe that there was a busier and more poorly laid-out cover in this series, but apparently it is true!
December 15th, 2017 at 6:45 pm
That “Arthur C. Clark, move over” blurb is getting a lot of mileage. I just picked up a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress (the Baen edition) and right there on the cover it says, “Arthur C. Clarke, move thyself over.”
December 15th, 2017 at 6:50 pm
‘Arthur C Clarke Move Over’ – The Ceylon Tourist Board, c1956.
December 15th, 2017 at 7:17 pm
@B. Chiclitz – Good Show Sir! I believe Clarke and Bunyan were schoolmates. I also have that Baen copy. It also has a shuriken of approval on the cover saying “Buffy fans findeth muche to fancy herein!”
December 16th, 2017 at 4:00 am
@Tom Noir: To be give credit where it’s due, I was just following the link Jon posted in #8.
But even as busy and cluttered as that cover is, nothing bothered me as much as that poor, orphaned little word “for.” It is a function word without a function. So sad. Doesn’t anyone read the text before they print it?
December 16th, 2017 at 4:02 am
@BC: But does it also say “Ye Novell”?
At least the third in this set got a dull cover instead of a horrifyingly eye-searing one. Yay?
December 16th, 2017 at 5:44 am
@B’Mancer— 😉
@Tor M—might as well ask “Doesn’t anyone write the text before they print it?”
December 16th, 2017 at 10:36 pm
@Tor: It’s BAEN! sigh
They honest to gosh don’t really edit. Hell, they don’t even proof-read.
I’m not joking; if you look at their books, the lack of proof-reading is obvious (I’m not sure they even spell-check), and they freely admit they don’t edit.
Slapdash is too kind a word, but their audience findeth muche to fancy and careth not about qualitye.